May 29, 2025

Round-up

Highlights

1. Commerce clamps down on EDA & chemicals. Letters from the U.S. Commerce Department now demand licences for shipping chip-design software and specialty chemicals to China, hitting Cadence, Synopsys and Siemens EDA overnight ¹.
2. Trade court nixes most Trump-era blanket tariffs. The Court of International Trade ruled the president over-stepped his authority, removing a swath of duties and muddying future leverage in trade talks ².
3. Nvidia & AMD prep “B20” and “Radeon AI PRO R9700” GPUs for China. Stripped-down AI accelerators—priced roughly 40 % below today’s H20—could ship in July, letting both firms stay inside the new U.S. export guard-rails ³.

Other developments

• China signals it may ease rare-earth export licences for EU and domestic chip firms ⁴
• South Korea’s central bank warns U.S. tariffs could trim semiconductor exports by 0.2 % this year ⁵
• Synopsys shrugged off the China headlines with a Q3 revenue outlook topping consensus ⁶
• Nvidia’s 69 % sales jump came with an $8 bn China-curb hit flagged in its 10-Q ⁷
• Materion acquired a tantalum-target plant in South Korea to bolster advanced-node materials supply ⁸
• ASMedia and Via Labs will join Apple and Intel in USB4 v2 controller silicon—shipping in 2026-27 ⁹

Did you know? Nvidia’s forthcoming “B20” AI GPU for China is expected to list at $6,500–$8,000, roughly $4,000 cheaper than today’s export-restricted H20 while staying just under the new performance caps ³.

In-depth

1. Government & Corporate Policy

• Broader export-control letters land ¹

  • Commerce suspended some existing licences and told EDA providers that all new China shipments need case-by-case approval.
  • Industry lawyers read the move as a “choke-point” tactic aimed at design-phase bottlenecks rather than finished chips.

• CIT tariff ruling ²

  • Judges said Congress—not the White House—controls foreign-commerce powers under the Constitution.
  • Analysts warn the decision, if upheld, weakens Washington’s bargaining chip just as negotiations with Tokyo and Brussels intensify.

• Rare-earth reprieve under discussion ⁴

  • Beijing’s commerce ministry met EU semiconductor firms, floating expedited licences for magnet-grade rare earths.
  • European fabs fear line stoppages within weeks if paperwork delays persist.

• Bank of Korea export stress-test ⁵

  • Central-bank model projects an overall 0.2 % semiconductor-export dip once 10 % U.S. duties kick in.
  • Policymakers cited “front-loaded” chip orders masking early-year weakness.

2. Economics, Finance & Business Outlook

• Nvidia: big beat, bigger caveats ⁷

  • Q1 revenue +69 % Y/Y; management guided Q2 to $45 bn despite an $8 bn China hit.
  • CEO Jensen Huang pushed for “controls that strengthen—not splinter—U.S. AI platforms.”

• Synopsys brushes off export-fear sell-off ⁶

  • Shares bounced 3.8 % after-hours as FY-Q3 revenue outlook of $1.76–1.79 bn topped the Street.
  • Company said it has not received an official Commerce letter to date.

• EDA stocks whipsawed on curb report ¹

  • Cadence –10 % intraday before recovering; investors digest licence-risk versus AI-driven demand.

• Materion’s Korean buy ⁸

  • Acquisition of Konasol’s tantalum-target assets gives Materion an Asia fab and expands sputtering-target capacity for AI/HPC chips.
  • Deal expected to close within 90 days, pending Korean regulatory review.

3. Technology & R&D

• China-bound AI GPUs ³

  • Nvidia “B20” (Blackwell-lite) and AMD “Radeon AI PRO R9700” reportedly meet the FLOPS/W caps while retaining transformer-friendly memory bandwidth.
  • Launch scheduled for July to capture Q3 cloud build-outs.

• USB4 v2 ecosystem broadens ⁹

  • ASMedia targets end-2026 silicon; Via Labs aims for 2027, bringing 80 Gb/s PAM-3 links to AMD boards.
  • Certification and motherboard qualification expected to take 12-18 months after first silicon.

• High-end PCIe 5.0 SSD monopoly cracking ¹⁰

  • Silicon Motion’s SM2508 controller—shown in >12 partner drives at Computex—challenges Phison’s E26 at the 14 GB/s tier.
  • Early samples clocked lower peak power, a boon for thermally constrained desktops.

• Nvidia filing adds open-source AI risk disclosure ⁷

  • Company warns that future U.S. restrictions on Chinese open-source AI models (e.g., DeepSeek, Qwen) could dent datacenter-GPU demand.
  • Legal teams track potential bans on connected-vehicle compute as another exposure.

Footnotes